The
29th annual Science Research Symposium puts everything under the microscope

by Tony Moore

The HUB Social Hall is a big room. Ballroom big.

So walking into the Social Hall for the 29th annual Science
Research Symposium—seeing hundreds of people crowding around the 77 posters
that filled the space, students explaining various data points on these
posters, questions and answers rolling back and forth through air thick with
information—it wouldn’t have been hard to picture Jesse Pinkman slouching in
and excitedly shouting, “Yeah, science!”

If you know Breaking
Bad, you know this isn’t quite what Jesse had in mind, but his ebullient
epithet sums up this event perfectly: With all of those posters detailing
topics ranging from murine macrophages and immunohistochemistry to the hemlock
woolly adelgid and subglacial pillow lava, it’s a cornucopia of
chemistry, biology, earth sciences and neuroscience (to name just a few) that
only the most science-averse couldn’t love.

In the maze of
posters

Over at display No. 7, Rizwan Saffie ’14 (biochemistry & molecular
biology) was fielding questions on his project, The Importance of
Fucosyltransferases in Breast Cancer Metastasis. Saffie worked on the project last year in Dr. Yibin Kang's metastasis lab at Princeton University as part of Princeton's Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Molecular and Quantitative & Computational Biology. At station No. 13, Allyson
Boyington ’15 (chemistry, environmental science, biochemistry & molecular biology) was holding court in front of
Microwave Accelerated Deprotection of Aryl Silyl Ethers. While at No. 16, Byron
Tannous ’14 (physics) and Michael Vecchio ’14 (physics) were explaining their
Autonomous Heliostat Design for Natural Room Lighting.

It’s no secret that science is important, and the
significance of the symposium itself extends from the students to the people in
attendance to those who may one day be affected by the research on all those
posters.

“The work I did in the Kang lab aims to understand breast
cancer metastasis at the molecular level,” says Saffie. “Such an understanding
could elucidate druggable targets for metastasis, which is the key killer in
cancer—metastases of different cancers are responsible for about 90 percent of
cancer deaths.”

Celeste Pilato ’15 (neuroscience) worked on her project last summer at
Johns Hopkins University. It looks at spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a condition that occurs
in 1 in 10,000 births worldwide, translating into 1 in 40 people being carriers
for the disease. “But many individuals are not aware of SMA,” Pilato explains. “By
raising awareness about it at the science symposium, it may spark another
researcher’s interest, helping to treat this disease.”

For Boyington, the value of the symposium for the student
researchers is just as clear. “Some people at the symposium are science
professors, while others are students from disciplines outside of science,” she
says. “This format teaches us how to communicate our findings effectively in a
way that everyone can understand.”

What’s next?

Regardless of the subject tackled, the symposium and the
research that led to it help students prepare for the world beyond the
classroom.

Saffie was recently admitted into the University of Pennsylvania
for a Ph.D. program in cell and molecular biology with a focus on cancer
biology, while Boyington plans to pursue a graduate degree in
medicinal or organic chemistry. Pilato, meanwhile, is preparing to take the
MCAT this spring and will start on the path to becoming a pediatric
neurologist.

“This summer, I’ll be returning to the same lab to continue
working with mouse models of SMA,” she says. “I’ll also be working at a camp
for children with neuromuscular disorders, including SMA. I am very excited to
work directly with the children for whom I do research.”